Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Paul
Mason (economics editor at Channel 4 and author of the recent book Postcapitalism: a guide to our future)
has reported (Guardian Weekly
02.10.15) on a paper by the Morgan Stanley economists Charles Goodhart, Manoj
Fradhan and Pratyancha Pardeshi. Their
argument goes that global demographic trends have resulted in a glut of labour
that has exerted a downwards pressure of wages for the past three decades (the
result of a baby boom in developed economies, urbanisation in the
industrialising economies and the entrance of millions of women into the
workforce). As urbanisation peters out
and birth rates fall, it is suggested, a labour shortage will develop leading
to a rise in the bargaining power and wages of the labour force. This will counter the predictions of rising
twenty-first century inequality by the likes of Thomas Piketty. We will find out in good time who is closer
to the mark.

In practice any gains by workers will depend
not only on global economic conditions (the vagaries of the business cycle) but
on the balance of class forces (improvements in pay and conditions need to be
maximised by a strong trades union movement) and on the economic, political and
cultural conditions in different localities.
Mason, however, regards the report as grist to the mill for his ideas as
to how a post capitalist world may materialise.
Faced with the possibility of a higher paid labour force, Mason asserts
that the stimulus for businesses to introduce labour saving technology will be
increased. He uses the example of
McDonalds, which he says are introducing touchscreen technology to replace that
portion of its labour force currently taking orders and payments from
customers. The pursuit of flexible
labour markets over recent decades has led to a substantial increase of
employees on temporary and informal contracts (a section of the workforce Mason
calls the ‘precariat’). Mason cites
another recent report by economists (at Delft University) that such flexible
workforces come at the expense of expanded management and limited incentive to
increase productivity through technological innovation. Hence the reason that “it’s common to hear
politicians of all stripes say that wages need to rise.” Mason is concerned that these politicians
succeed in tackling the presence of the ‘precariat’. The theory goes (see his recent book) that
continued increases in productivity will see the value of goods reduce to the
point where they become virtually free heralding a transition to a
postcapitalist era, a sort of lengthy and convoluted transition from capitalism
to a kind of communistic society.

Capitalism
undoubtedly does demonstrate a tendency for the price of goods to fall over
time due to the development and implementation of labour saving
technology. This drive to reduce labour
costs (to maximise profits) is a basic feature of capitalism and not just when
wages are rising, after all the touchscreen technology being introduced by
McDonalds is being carried out despite its labour force consisting of the
‘precariat’. The drive to innovate may
well be stimulated by rising wages but it is doubtful whether the trend for
increasing productivity will reduce the value of a significant amount of goods
to the point where their value is negligible at any point in the next 50-100
years, despite the fact that some goods can or could do (digital technologies). Such developments certainly do highlight a
major contradiction of capitalist production - an increase in material wealth
(more goods) leads at the same time to a fall in the value (per unit) of those
goods. However, waiting for this trend
to result in a postcapitalist world will probably be like waiting for Godot.

There are contradictions enough in capitalist
production for workers to see the necessity in ending it, not just following
through the logic of its development.
Just as the transition from feudalism to capitalism entailed political
struggle, battles over different visions of the future, of different ideals, so
will the transition from capitalism to socialism. The difference is that now the struggle is
not over one group of owners, of rulers, supplanting another in a struggle in
which intentions and ideas were often veiled (by religion) and unconscious. Marx has some interesting things to say on
this when he writes about the fetishism (veiled appearance) of commodities:
“The veil is not removed from the countenance of the material process of
production, until it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands
under their conscious and planned control.” (Capital, vol.1, p.173) In
other words, the transition from capitalism to socialism, by necessity, has to
reject capitalist social relations (appearing as a society of free and equal
exchange but based on exploitation and the extraction of surplus value from
workers) and establish a new society of free association and conscious and
planned control of economic activity. In
other words, the transformation of a society based on commodities and value
(buying and selling) to one based on the free exchange of use-values, the
establishment under democratic control of the means of living (nature,
factories, transport, etc.). A
transition between capitalism and socialism must therefore have to be conscious
and clear-sighted and involve a relatively short period of rapid social change,
a revolution, a break from one kind of society to another.

The contradictions within capitalism of the
kind that Mason cites, that make some goods effectively free (as examples of
different social possibilities), may be part of the story of how such a
revolution comes to pass. However, there
will, at some point, need to be conscious process of social change and not, as
Mason suggests, a lengthy opaque and semi-conscious process where various
policies are advocated that would encourage the digital revolution in order to
transfigure capitalism rather than end it.